One of Their Better Parties
by Doyle-sb4
Summary: Lindsay comes up with the bright idea of weekly family dinners. Gob turns up with an uninvited guest. (Gob/Tony Wonder)


It was Lindsay, one eye firmly on her approval ratings, who'd pushed for weekly family dinners. 'Showing a united front for Buster', she'd said. 'Keeping this family together', she'd said. So Michael felt justified in blaming her for the deterioration in his relationship with his son.

"Right," Lindsay said, pushing past him to get to the refrigerator. "I made you steal George Michael's movie-star girlfriend. That's on me. Did you already check in here?"

"Nothing in the cabinets, the emergency stash Mom thinks we don't know about's empty, and all the water bottles I could find really are full of water. I did not steal his girlfriend. If anything, he was having an affair with my girlfriend. Which I've forgiven him for," he added, with a generosity that he felt would have gotten him credit, in any normal family, for going above and beyond. "Did you see that, just now? The way he stormed out of here? I do not know what's going through his head these days."

"So he just left for no reason. You didn't say anything."

Michael reran the conversation in his head – himself, gracious, self-deprecating, humble; his son, defensive, sullen and unable to take even a small Oedipus complex joke meant to lighten a difficult situation. "Not a word," he said.

"One dinner," Lindsay said to the empty air. "I want us to pretend to be a normal, loving family for one dinner a week. Why can't we do that?"

Their mother swept into the kitchen.

"There it is," Michael said.

"Tell your brother that for the last time, drug dealers are not real friends."

"Mom, turn me around! My whole screen is just your C-H-E-S-T."

Lucille pursed her lips and flipped the iPad in her hands. Buster peered out of the screen. "Aw, it was better the other way," he mumbled, but rallied with a "Heyyy, brother and sister."

"Hey, pal, how are you doing? Sounds like you're making friends."

"Oh, no. They're still keeping me away from the other prisoners." Buster tugged at the collar of his orange jumpsuit. "Mom means Gob. He just got here."

"And he's brought a guest. _Someone_, Michael, needs to remind him that he's President of the Bluth Company now. The last thing we need is another pothead taking out a restraining order."

Buster loomed closer to the camera. "He's not a drug dealer, Mother. He's Tony Wonder. He's famous."

"Don't get excited," Michael told his sister, who'd suddenly taken an interest. "Magician-famous, not real person-famous. Not like Rebel's famous" – and he expected this sort of petty jealousy from Lindsay and their mother, but he was hurt that even Buster rolled his eyes.

"He's an amazing magician," Buster said. "Carry me back out there so I can say hi."

Instead, Lucille propped him up against a bowl of artificial fruit. "You stay right there."

"He doesn't have a lot of choices," Michael reminded her over Buster's whine of disappointment. "You wouldn't let us tape him to the Roomba."

"I will not have Buster scuttling around my floor like a huge near-sighted beetle," she snapped. "You two keep him entertained. I'm going to lock my jewelry in the bedroom safe."

"Magician, Mom, not drug dealer."

"Yes, I heard you. It's even worse than I thought."

"Isn't sobriety _great_," Lindsay said, although she waited until their mother was safely out of earshot.

"It is. I'm really happy for Mom." Buster flashed a watery smile. "And I'm glad Gob came. I was worried when he didn't show the last three weeks."

Michael traded sidelong glances with Lindsay, mostly to reassure himself that someone else hadn't noticed Gob's absence. "Sure, we've all been worried," he said.

"_So_ worried," his sister murmured, and did them both a favor by changing the subject. "Tony Wonder. Why do I know that name?"

"Gob used to talk about him a lot. Tony Wonder's his idol. Slash nemesis." More on the nemesis side these days, as far as Michael knew; he thought about Gob brandishing a gold cross, a look of pure, righteous, _moronic _fury on his face. "A couple of months ago he decided Wonder sabotaged some trick at his wedding. Either they made up or this is some insane part of his plan to get revenge."

"What wedding?" Buster and Lindsay said together, and Buster clapped his hands – "Jinx! Oh, I think I'm losing..."

They looked in silence together at the blank screen for a few seconds, until Lindsay said, "The warden'll fix it for him. He always does."

Michael took the opportunity to pour some juice into a coffee cup. It seemed cruel to remind Buster of the home comforts he was missing in jail. He suspected that was exactly why it was the only drink in his mother's whole kitchen.

Lindsay was craning back against the counter to get a look at the people in the living room. "This Tony Wonder guy's kind of cute. I mean, in a little, spiky way."

"He markets himself as the Gay Magician, Linds. Is that really a road you want to go down twice?"

"Ugh, don't let Tobias hear you. He's gotten so sensitive about that. I can't get through one conversation without hearing about all these ex-con groupie women he's going on blind dates with. It's disgusting."

"You want him back, don't you?"

She let out a long sigh. "It's not happening. It can't. Even if he wanted to get together, it'd be a complete disaster for my campaign."

"And..."

"And I've never wanted him more. Shut up. He's not even coming tonight. He's out on a date. Thank God he didn't bring her here."

"Come on, what kind of monster would bring a date to a Bluth family dinner?"

That made her smile. "Right. You'd have to be a complete idiot."

He saw the exact moment when she realized what she'd said, two seconds after he'd thought the same thing. They stared at each other.

"It could be a date," he said, at the same moment that Lindsay said "Gob's _gay_?"

And because she was his twin sister – genetics and adoption papers be damned, she was getting to be so much like their mother it kept him up at night – he understood the expression that flashed across her face too fast to read. _Wait, what?_ almost instantly turned into _Actually, that would explain a lot_ and touched briefly on _I don't know how I feel about this_ before she landed on the final Bluthian stage of dealing with startling news: _What's in it for me? _

"I should ask him to talk at one of my rallies."

"Your party's against gay marriage."

"That's why it's perfect! Gob's a great example of somebody who shouldn't be allowed to get married. Not because he's gay," she added. "Just in general."

The depressing thing was that Gob would probably go for that if she let him do a magic show first. "Aren't you jumping the gun a little? Just because Tony Wonder's gay, that doesn't mean they're a couple. Maybe Gob's just made a friend. You know, a platonic relationship with one of those people who spend time with you because they enjoy your company."

"Gob's company," Lindsay said. "Enjoying spending time with Gob. Without even getting sex out of the deal."

Michael sipped at his juice. "It sounded unlikely as I was saying it," he admitted.

* * *

He persuaded Lindsay to let him talk to Gob first, even though she was obviously dying of curiosity. He pointed out that she and Gob had never been that close, and that if he really was in a relationship with a man he might be worried about telling the whole family, and because she was having a tough time with the Tobias thing he kindly didn't say that as the only one of them in a successful relationship he was best placed to give their brother advice.

He found Gob and Tony Wonder out on the balcony, and knew right away that they were together. It was nothing big, nothing he would have seen if he hadn't been looking for it – certainly nothing he'd been braced for when he made a point of knocking loudly on the frosted glass door to give them a chance to rearrange clothes and body parts if needed – but there was something about the way Wonder was looking at his brother. Something about the way they were standing together, not quite touching but angled towards one another, Gob's arm resting on the railing that Wonder was leaning against.

Tony Wonder himself seemed... well, he was a career magician. Gob, any romantic relationship aside, admired him. Given all of that, he was exactly as Michael would have expected, smooth and confident in the way that shaded into an arrogance he would absolutely guarantee was unwarranted, and Lindsay hadn't been wrong about _little_ and _spiky_. Still, he said the right things, the accepted meeting-the-family script: "this is a beautiful apartment" and "It's great to meet you."

"I met your kid earlier," Tony added. "George, right?"

"George Michael," Gob corrected him, and to Michael: "He got on the elevator as we were getting off. Why'd he run out?"

"Kid stuff. Who knows. And we've actually met," he reminded Tony. "We've just never been introduced." He had no idea why that would make Gob's smile drop, or why the two of them shifted a little closer together. "My family's fundraiser? Seven, eight years ago?"

Whatever had been wrong, that fixed it. "Right," Tony said, "the fundraiser thing. Yeah, of course. Wow, that was _terrible_. You're right, we weren't introduced then, and that was the only time we ever ran into each other. But Gob seriously never stops talking about you."

Michael could have done without the good-humored faux eye-roll at that, but he also saw an opening. "He has... said a lot about you over the years too," he said. "You know who else is a big fan of yours?" This was clearly the right thing to say. Tony didn't exactly preen, but he stood a little taller. "Our kid brother Buster. He's calling in from jail. I know he'd get a really big kick out of his favorite magician saying hi."

He decided that this had to be love when Gob only glared at him a little for that 'favorite magician' thing.

"Let's both go talk to Buster," Gob tried, but Tony shook his head.

"It's fine. Catch up with Michael."

Gob turned his back on his brother, as if in the belief that that would let him have a private conversation on a balcony eight feet across. "Are you sure? I promised I wouldn't leave you alone with my mother."

"Yeah, and you also promised there'd be alcohol. It's fine." Tony smiled up at him. It was far warmer and more open than the practised, distant smile he'd been bestowing on Michael – the same one Rebel wore for interviewers and fans who interrupted them at dinner – and although they hadn't kissed or even joined hands, Michael found himself moving to the edge of the balcony to give them some privacy.

When Tony had gone and he was alone with his brother, it was a long moment before Michael said, "So."

"So."

"Your new sense of purpose. Getting revenge on Tony Wonder. How's that coming along?"

"Pretty good. Pretty good." Gob leaned against the balcony. "There has been a slight change to my revenge plan."

"Has there. Has there really."

"Yes," Gob said, very reasonably. "We're in love and he's my boyfriend now."

"That does sound like quite a change in direction," Michael agreed, and considered that _boyfriend _didn't sound nearly so surprising from Gob as _in love_.

"Tobias actually gave me some really smart advice – he said that the best..."

"I'm sorry," Michael said, "who's Tobias?"

Gob blinked at him. "Little guy. Sex offender. Married to our sister."

"No, I know our brother-in-law Tobias, but who's the one who gave you this... you know what, it doesn't matter. What's this smart advice?"

"Supposedly people say that the best revenge is living well." He shrugged, as if it was out of his hands and Michael should take it up with these unknown 'people'. "So instead of destroying Tony Wonder's life, I'm going to let him be in a relationship with me and make me happy. It's like he's carrying out my revenge for me."

"Okay," Michael said. "I'm just going to go right ahead and focus on the non-stupid part of that. _Does_ he make you happy?"

"Of course he makes me happy, Michael. That's why my revenge plan is perfect."

Michael regarded his brother, who seemed to be trying for a smirk into the middle distance but instead looked like he might, any second now, burst into tears or burst into song; he looked obviously, stupidly, giddily in love.

"I'm happy for you," he said, and Gob wrapping himself around him in a crushing hug was the first normal thing that had happened all day.

* * *

"Are you going to tell everyone else?" he asked, after Gob had finally disentangled from him and wiped his eyes and taken a moment to collect himself.

"Probably. Eventually."

"Lindsay guessed. If she asks you to speak at a political event, just say no."

"Michael," Gob said affectionately, "I'm your older brother. Don't tell me what to do."

He sighed. Fine, when he and Tony found themselves Republican poster-boys, let them go crying to someone else to fix it. "You need to tell Mom. Dad too, wherever the hell he is right now."

"I'm thinking about coming out in the form of a spectacular illusion," Gob said thoughtfully, and really, Michael was an idiot for ever expecting anything else.

"Well, think about it some more, okay? I know it might be a difficult conversation, buddy, but it's one you need to have."

"What are they gonna say?" Gob asked quietly, and Michael almost reached out to pat him on the shoulder before he realized that wasn't anxiety in his voice. Resolve sounded strange coming from Gob. "Mikey, either they're okay with this or they're not. And if they're not, I choose Tony."

Michael had told his family he was through with them a good thirty or forty times, so he was surprised to find that his instinctive reaction was _I could never do that_.

And he was floored when Gob went on, "It's like you and what's-her-name. Rebel. Choosing her even though it's destroying your relationship with George Michael."

It was a long time before he could speak, and the only words that would eventually come were, "I've made a huge mistake."

* * *

He collided with Maeby in the lobby. "I had a bet with myself over how many weeks I could miss Mom's stupid dinner before she..."

"That's great," he said. "Where's your cousin?"

"Please tell me you're finally gonna make up about the Rebel thing."

"If I can find him."

"Thank God. I think he's actually been crying in the shower. It's been like living with my dad again." She punched the button for the elevator. "George Michael's at home. I wasn't going to come but he told me he walked in on Uncle Gob in the elevator with his hands down some guy's pants, and if Gob's actually about to come out I need to see Gangie's face."

Michael hesitated, because he'd been selfish and stupid and he had to make things right before he destroyed the most important thing in his world; but at the same time, some things only happened once in a lifetime.

"My phone has a camera," she said. "And I've won awards for filming horrifying but compelling dramatic moments. Go."


End file.
